Review of other attempts of Decipherment

HOME

The decipherment of the Indus script was a challenge of the last century. The various teams of scholars could not achieve this goal, and the last date expired unceremoniously. If somebody claims to have achieved it, nobody is going to accept it very soon.

There is some agreement on the complex system of governance and town planning, but what they thought about themselves and the world is not known.

Mahadevan believes that the language of the Indus inscriptions is Dravidian. This is based on the superficial difference between the north and south Indian languages. Though both are at the agglutinative stage, the former have some amount of inflexion and the latter do not have it. The Aryan languages have descended through the various phases of their inflexional ancestor, but the Dravidian languages have no such record. We imagine how it could have happened.

At the very infancy of the agglutinative Indus, the ancestor of the modern Aryan, Dravidian and Santhal languages, some tragic event separated the Indus communities in at least four groups. The Southern and Eastern groups did not have favourable conditions for the growth of their languages which limped for all times to come on the agglutinative stage. But the Western and Northern groups, which also partly came together, had very favourable conditions for the growth of their languages. They ran towards the inflexional stage and, after reaching the climax, started climbing down towards the analytic state, beginning with the composition of the vedic hymns. They culminated in the origin of the modern vernaculars.

This is the main cause of some superficial difference between the Aryan and Dravidian languages. Historically, the Aryan, Dravidian and Santhal languages are cousin-sisters.

Asko Parpola's Deciphering the Indus script has gone astray in many ways. He assumes that the language underneath the Indus script is proto-Dravidian, but then also says that bare stems make clauses. It is not more than assuming an isolating language underneath the Indus script. But why then the term Dravidian is dragged here?

Mahadevan has criticised Parpola for his greater emphasis on mythology and religion than on the linguistic aspect, because the fish and stars can not read the Indus script. But Mahadevan himself expects from him the search for kinship terms like father, son, etc. in the Indus texts. It is too much. The inscriptions represent a language of the isolating stage, where there are only monosyllabic words making small clauses and phrases. For 'wife' there is a clause yo Sa (1193) 'gives pleasure', which was fossilised as yoSA towards the last phase of the agglutinative Indus. The clause ta na Sa in four graphic forms is a primitive form of what later at the inflexional Indus stage appeared as ta'nas, quotable only once in the RV. We cannot say that there was ta for 'father' and na for 'mother' at the isolating stage, but somehow at the agglutinative stage there were certainly two clauses, tata ma-ha (the father has grown old) and nana ma-ha (the mother has grown old), which contracted as tatA-maha (grandfather) and nanA-mahI (grandmother) at the Vedic stage. Thus, father and mother would have appeared in Indus only at the agglutinative stage as tata and nana respectively. The vedic forms pitAmaha and mAtAmaha are later formations., but the primitive perfect form ma-ha becoming suffix is not realised. Even now in the rustic dialects we make perfect forms by means of ha and pluperfect form s by means of ra. The pluperfect affix ra appears in ca-ra (had been, had taken place), a secondary affix noted by Panini.

SR Rao's Indus script deciphered goes to the other extreme in assuming that the language of the Indus inscriptions is proto-Sanskrit and sees the long compound makhanAshana in the text around the Pasupati figure. Many other scholars give their own readings of the text, omitting one or other of the seven syllables.

In the Web site:

http://alumni/eecs.berkeley.edu/~lorentz/Ancient_Scripts/indus.html ; three major hurdles in the decipherment of the Indus script have been pointed out, namely :
1. very brief and short texts
2. the language underneath unknown
3. no bilingual texts.

But the brevity of the texts suggests that the language is very primitive. Perhaps there cannot be any language more primitive than this. The words are monosyllabic and the clauses are of the types s+ v, s + o + v, oblique-case + s + v. At least one clause is seen reparaphrased in the RV: Sa Tha (embryo circle = the egg rolled forth) has been paraphrased in the hymns of creation : hiraNya-garbhas samavartatAgre. Its many clauses reflect in the wornout, reduced and decayed vocables of the RV; e.g. ta na Sa reflects in the vedic ta'nas, Na ga reflects in na'g, and so on. It is said that there are no bilingual texts. But really three types of script has been used in writing these inscriptions, namely the animal figures, the geometrical figures and numerals. The specific sizes or shapes and length of the numerals reflect in the syllabic order of the Mahesvarasutras.

S C Kak seems to ignore the historical development thru the isolating, agglutinative and Inflexional stages. The inflexional Sanskrit must have started with isolating stage, and, if that primitive form of the language has been discovered, Why should the one be not connected with other thru the genealogical line, if evidences are there ? We have seen that ta'nas: ta na Sa, ca'nas: ca na Sa, etc. are related not only phonetically but also semitically and they can be read in the texts. We should not reject this big find. The isolated words of any importance should have no relevance in an inscription which is supposed to have been forwarded to posterity.

Kalyanaraman insists to see a word in each sign, not only in an animal or geometrical figure but also in the numerals. Though, even a dot has some significance in the relevant contexts, the Logographic reading appears to be an easy way to grasp the thing by getting rid of the grammar.

Natwar Jha and Rajaram ,in the Deciphered Indus Script, have been misled by the brevity and shortness of the Indus texts. They take it to be the Vedic language of the Sutra period. They forget that the Vedic language is inflexional throughout all its phases, whereas, the graphic form of the texts only support the existence of an isolating and agglutinative language underneath the same. The language of the Indus inscriptions is related with the vedic language not as its junior sister but as the grandmother. If there is any Vedic word in the inscriptions, it is in its most primitive form. The Vedic ta'nas may be seen here in the form of a clause namely ta na Sa and so on. Thus, seeing the words of Nighantu in the Indus inscriptions is to guillotine the graphic rules.

Egbert-Richter Ushanas has read a part of the Indus texts logographically, of course, on the background of the subsequent Vedic culture , admitting that the logographic reading is only subjective. Thus, the text 2091 (51-130-149-342) interpreted by him as "Soma, The King of plants, may be benevolent to our town" conveys a purely subjective meaning.

As said above, the Vedic words do not present themselves in the Indus texts in their original form as seen thru their graphic forms. All Indus signs appear to be capped with a vowel and most of the Vedic words end with consonants. If the final consonant of the Vedic word is capped with a vowel, it can graphically match an Indus text. That is to say, if na'g (Night) is extended as Na ga, it can be searched in the Indus texts.

To read the extant Indus texts, we have to expand some decayed and wornout Vedic words, the nestors of the Vedic language to the Indus size. This process has borne out excellent results. The language of the Indus inscriptions is the grandmother of the Vedic language-the one at the isolating stage and the other at the inflexional stage, the intermediary agglutinative stage, the mother, to be searched in the ruins of the Castle.

An isolating clause

1. Na ra (An animal goes) contracted to 2. Nara (A going animal).

A new clause

3. Nara ha (A man says)

4. Nara ha (A man said)

An agglutinative clause

5. Nara A-ha (A man past-say = said)

6. Plural Nara-Sa A-hu-Sa (Men said)

An inflexional clause

7. na'ras Ahus (Men said)

Just as we have come from 1 to 7, we can also go from 7 to 1 back.

TOP

BOOKS ON DECIPHERMENT

THE SOCIETY REFLECTING IN THE INDUS SCRIPTS

THE CONCEPT OF SARASVATI

THE BASIS OF THE VEDIC MYTHOLOGY

A HISTORY REWRITTEN